First Among Equals Chapter 22: To See

When Caen woke up, his room was brighter than it should have been. He imdiately sat up in bed, swearing under his breath.

I woke up late again, he thought, reaching for the pocket watch by his bedside table.

Then he opened his eyes, and the room went dark. Wait, what?

Caen could make out just a hint of light coming through his window. It was the early hours of the morning. Then what had just happened a mont ago?

He felt around for his pocket watch, staggered off his bed, and made his way to the door, where he pulled a string connected to the wall lamp. Yellow light bathed the room imdiately.

It was 5 in the morning, his pocket watch told him. He'd slept three hours earlier than usual last night and had still woken up an hour later. Still…

Caen pulled the string again, plunging the room into sudden darkness.

He closed his eyes.

And he could see once more. The room looked dimly lit, but he could see everything.

Hand still on the string, he turned the wall lamp back on, and the world was flooded with color. Everything looked brighter. Sharper, sohow. More distinct in every way.

“Bones of my ancestors,” Caen whispered to himself. His eyes were still closed, yet he saw as clearly as if they weren't. Clearer even.

He opened his eyes, and imdiately, the vision was replaced by a familiar but slightly inferior view.

This was his mother's bloodline. Marked by the speculon on his forehead: a mirror shaped like a vertical eye.

He'd long since co to terms with the fact that he'd been born with a nonfunctional instance of it.

Now, though… he closed his eyes, and the world ca alive with color and crispness.

He wondered if this sudden improvent was due to his new Mimicking abilities. He didn't know why that could be the case, but he was in very deep waters at this point, and his knowledge was severely lacking.

He touched the speculon on his forehead, and his vision was completely and totally unimpeded.

Caen laughed. He wasn't all that superstitious, but with how ridiculously wonderful his week had been going, he was starting to think that so proportional amount of disaster or doom was due.

He tried impeding his speculon with other body parts and could still see right through them, though when he tried using cloth and other materials, they blocked his sight.

Caen glanced at his window. He was supposed to go out onto the roof and carry out his morning routine, but all that could wait.

His speculon only worked when his eyes were closed, and whenever he opened his physical eyes, it went dark. His mother could see from her eyes and speculon at the sa ti.

There has to be a way for to replicate that for myself, he thought.

* * *

It was the beginning of dawn when Caen threw on his weighted vest, strapped his training glaive onto his back, and made for the copse of trees where he usually t Aunt Vensha. This was much earlier than they usually t.

His experints had yielded very few results, if any. He still couldn't use his eyes and speculon at the sa ti. He jogged now with his physical eyes closed and his speculon seeing. It was such a novel experience for him. He knew his eyes were closed, but at the sa ti, he could see fine, finer even, and there was sothing slightly disorienting about that.

He curved around his usual entry point and stopped a good distance off. Aunt Vensha sat with her back to a tree, ditating.

Caen sat down on the grass in a lotus position. Every morning, his aunt ca out here to practice a Body-enhancent sequence that had her empower as many muscle groups as she could, moving through each one contemplatively. It helped her refine her bodily control.

Caen activated Soul-sense, linking their soul structures. If doing so had affected her training, she did not show it. His eyes were still closed, but he had no problem seeing the tapestry of threads that made up her soul structure. He'd hoped that there would be so noticeable difference, an extra advantage from using Soul-sense with his speculon, but perhaps that was a little too greedy of him.

Yesterday, while sparring with Malo, Caen had properly acquainted himself with the cluster of threads that represented the affinity for Body-enhancent. But isolating it in Vensha's soul structure still took him longer than expected. For one, she had two clusters active in her soul. One of them was far more prominent than the other. Caen suspected that the less prominent one represented her Spirit-healing affinity, since she always had her tendrils out while running through her Body-enhancent exercises. She said she liked the challenge. Thus, he focused his attention on the more active cluster.

The light of dawn was brighter by the ti he finished conforming his Body-enhancent affinity to hers. Caen's physical senses grew even sharper than they had when he'd Mimicked Malo yesterday. His body felt so much more limber and stronger. Vensha's affinity was definitely higher.

This book's true ho is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

These passive augntations are unreal.

He opened his eyes—cutting off his speculon— and got off the ground with enough force that he stumbled. His heightened coordination allowed him to regain his balance very quickly.

He walked towards her. When her spirit grazed his, she opened her eyes and turned to look behind her.

“Hey, I was thinking we could start a little earlier than usual today,” he said.

She eyed him curiously, but stood up to stretch her back and limbs. “Why did you co in from a different direction?”

“Novelty.”

Aunt Vensha snorted and began running. Caen followed. It took a lot of self-control not to run as fast as he could.

When they reached their usual sparring location, a wide empty field with no one in sight, he wasn't even winded. Caen was seriously starting to fall in love with passive augntations.

“I heard that you and Zeris got mixed up with a few shady sorts in Redshadow so nights ago,” Vensha said.

Caen winced. “Yeah, it's a long story. I'll tell you all about it after we spar.”

She grunted but said nothing more.

Caen took out a strip of cloth and blindfolded himself with it. Imdiately, he could see more clearly.

“What are you doing?” Aunt Vensha asked, looking very amused.

“Just training my other senses,” Caen said simply. Sotis, Caen blindfolded himself and used his spirit tendrils to determine people's locations relative to himself. But even though they could tell him that soone was nearby, that didn't help him know what exactly they were doing. He extended his spirit outwards, all the sa.

Vensha eyed him for a mont longer before shaking her head and running through combat forms.

Caen followed her movents smoothly in silence. She switched up the sequences a few tis, and he pretended not to notice.

When she ca at him, he was watching her.

He slipped aside with such unnatural grace that Vensha's eyes widened. He continued practicing combat forms as though it'd been a re fluke, and she watched him with suspicion. He hadn't even needed to cast a spell. The self-control needed not to smile with glee was imasurable.

She lunged at him again. He parried her prod with more power and speed than he'd ever used. Fighting with passive augntations was such an exhilarating experience. His body felt like a puppet in his hands, moving swiftly according to his whims. Aunt Vensha ducked under his swing and stabbed at his legs, but he was already out of the way.

She pulled back and hefted her sword onto her shoulder, frowning. “Alright, co clean. What in the three realms are you actually doing?”

Caen broke out into a laugh.

Aunt Vensha smiled. “I can't rember the last ti I saw you laugh this heartily.”

Caen sighed pleasantly. He tapped his forehead. “I can ‘see’ now.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Since when? How? Wait, no, no. That doesn't explain anything.”

“I woke up this morning and could see through my speculon. I suspect this has sothing to do with discovering my third bloodline.”

“Discovering your third—” Her eyes widened. “Tahal. That explains—you were using Body-enhancent then? Is the abjection, uh, gone?”

“Not exactly,” Caen said. “It's actually related to what happened in Redshadow…”

When he was done explaining everything to her, she looked so laden with emotion. She grabbed him by the shoulders and squeezed hard. “Caen, this is amazing. I'm so—ancestors, I always thought—I'm so happy for you, Caen.” Her eyes watered.

Her words ward his heart and made his own eyes prickle. Caen had never seen her this emotional before. “There's still so much I'm yet to figure out. I wanted to go into Redshadow tomorrow—”

“Definitely, yes! We should go tomorrow night.” She swept her hands over her head. “Ancestors, this has truly made my day. Have you told your parents?”

“Not yet,” he sighed. “With the reclamation efforts happening in Odaton, I'd rather not disturb them with this.”

“Fair point. They'll be back soon anyway. Grena ntioned. So, how does this work? You said you receive passive augntations when you mimic my affinity, right?”

“I didn't say ‘mimic’, but yes, that's essentially what I did.”

“You said you find so sort of affinity representation in my soul?”

“Kind of what I said.”

“Then you find a counterpart representation in yours?”

“Mhm.”

“And then you shape it, ‘mimicking’ the form and texture and what have you?”

He let out a defeated sigh.

“So… mimicry,” she said. “It's a perfect na.”

“I'm hoping for a stroke of inspiration to give a more lofty na.”

She snorted. “You're just being stubborn. Co on, let's test this thing out.”

Caen knew of a few Body-enhancent spells, though he'd never been able to cast the majority of them properly or successfully, to say nothing of the downright impractical ti it took to cast them in the first place. One could only be said to have fully adapted a spell when the working took every single ti they cast it, and with minimal strain to both mind and spirit. Caen's abjection ant that the basic act of moving his spirit in the requisite patterns and engaging the visualizations took so much more effort and ti for him than it did for others. As a child, he'd suffered injuries from every spell he'd attempted casting.

Now, however, his spirit patterns and visualizations felt as natural to him as breathing.

Caen was able to evade Vensha's blows with relative ease. And even though he wasn't putting any pressure on her either, they retained an uncertain stalemate. But of course, she was still holding herself back, not even casting spells yet. She had far better skill and aptitude than he did in using her passive augntations.

His spirit contorted in distinct patterns. The fingers on his free hand gesturing swiftly, visualizations flitting through his mind. And she didn't even need to wait long for him to cast.

He moved in and out of her personal space, getting even better acquainted with this empowered form of his body. It felt like he was taking his first breath of fresh air. He'd felt the sa thing yesterday evening when Mimicking Malo.

Body-enhancent spells could be mana-intensive, and learning how not to use too much mana with a willing spirit was an art he was utterly unskilled in. It was a problem he'd never had before. It was the best problem in the world, and Caen loved it with all his heart.

Aunt Vensha soon started overpowering him. His timing was off, and he couldn't cast with enough speed and fine control to even out the playing field.

Eventually, she had a sword to his neck, but she was mirroring the proud smile on Caen's face.